Two reTweets for your consideration

First, from the Extinction Rebellion newsletter’s ‘Drones Are Changing Asymmetrical Warfare, September 18, 2019, Max Wilbert, deep green resistance news service

The following scheme is deranged, dangerous, and as disgusting as any thing I’ve heard promoted in a long time.  In fact, after having worked on this for a couple days, before bed last night I’d tossed my cookies when the images flashed in my mind like a neon light again.  It’s also insanely cavalier given how much of the world depends on oil for heating, cooling, and cooking through no fault of their own, and how many economies are based on oil.  Whose refineries does Wilbert imagine drone bombing next?


Allow me to add once again that had ‘the civilized Western World’ listened to the ecosocialists in the global south two decades ago, the planet wouldn’t have had to been suffering such devastation and climate chaos.  I know that there are many climate militants who echo: ‘By any means necessary’, but this is crossing the Rubicon for me. 

Take it, Max:

“On Saturday, September 14th, a “suicide drone” attack struck the Abqaiq oil processing facility in Buqayq, Saudi Arabia. The drones were destroyed in the attack, but at this time it is not believed that the operators were exposed or harmed in any way.

Abqaiq is the largest oil facility in the world, with the capacity to process 7% of global oil supplies. Before the attack it was refining around 6.8 million barrels of oil per day. The attack is believed to have reduced Saudi Oil production by 50 percent, or 6 million barrels per day. That’s equivalent to the national usage of India and Australia combined, or more than 1/3rd of the United States oil consumption.

Saudi Arabia produces 10% of the global supply of crude oil. Therefore, this single attack, believed to have been carried out with roughly 10 drones with a range of less than 100 miles, cut world oil production by 5 percent.

The use of drones in warfare has risen over the past five years. Initially, large UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) designed by U.S. weapons manufacturers dominated drone warfare. Increasingly, however, small and even off-the-shelf drones are being used in asymmetrical conflict to great effect. For example, in Syria, Daesh (Isis) and Hezbollah have both been recorded using inexpensive off-the-shelf drones to scout and direct fire for ground troops, to drop small bombs, and as “suicide bombers.”

Environmentalists should take heed. This one attack—albeit an attack unlikely to be motivated by concern for the planet and ecology—has been more effective than the entire environmental movement, which has failed to stop the growth in fossil fuel production and consumption. These new tactics change how strategies such as Decisive Ecological Warfare could be implemented.”

Some people may worry about the environmental damage caused by such a massive fire. But we should remember that all the petroleum processed at this refinery would have been burned anyway. The only difference is that it would have been burned while powering cargo ships, mining platforms, tanks, and other destructive industrial infrastructure. It is always preferable to see petroleum burn all at once, with no application, than to have it all burned over time while aiding in the destruction of the planet. The destruction of the equipment also means that more fossil fuels will stay in the ground for longer, since if there is no nearby processing capacity for them, extraction must stop. With very few exceptions, the living world would benefit from any fossil fuel infrastructure being destroyed, no matter how “messy” that destruction is.”

‘…an attack unlikely to be motivated by concern for the planet and ecology’, ya think, you asshat?  The Houthis bombed the refinery to get Saudi Arabia to quit bombing Yemen to smithereens, and killing and starving hundreds of thousands of Yemenis!  I won’t even challenge your ‘facts’ on reducing the facilities oil refining, except to note that it’s all temporary until they have some new parts made to get production online again.]

Now as for Gene Sharp, over a decade ago I’d dutifully written up the Guardian coverage, including his adorable little handbook of suggestions.  A year or so later I was appalled and embarrassed  when I’d learned some of the following:

‘CIA Backed Color Revolutions; The Dishonest Career of the Remarkable Srđa Popović,  F. William Engdahl, October 03, 2017, journal-neo.org (Creative Commons)

“Many readers likely never heard the name of the remarkable Serbia-born political operator named Srđa Popović. Yet he and his organization, CANVAS, have played a lead role in most every CIA-backed Color Revolution since he led the toppling of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, at least fifty according to last count. Now he has turned his sights on Hungary and Hungary’s popular and defiant Prime Minister Victor Orban.

On September 8, the professional regime-change specialist Srđa Popović came to Budapest and joined with the anti-Orban opposition groups in front of the Hungarian Parliament. It‘s clear that Popović was not in town to promote his Hungarian book on nonviolent regime change but rather to give aid to the anti-Orban parties before Hungarian elections in spring of 2018. Many in Hungary smell the oily hand of Hungarian-born regime-change financier George Soros behind the Popović appearance now in Budapest.

Because of the manufactured aura of “hip doer-of-good-deeds” surrounding the personality of Srđa Popović, it’s useful to look closely at who sponsored his remarkable career since he founded a tiny Belgrade student opposition NGO called Otpor! in 1998 with its now famous clenched fist logo. The career of Srđa Popović from 2000 until today suggest a remarkably dishonest manipulator in the service of foreign intelligence agencies and governments, despite his vehement claims otherwise.

Popović first came to international notice as the founder of the Belgrade student political activist organization Otpor! which means “Resistance!” in Serbian. In October 1998 Popović founded Otpor!, initially as a student protest group at Belgrade University dealing with student grievances. That was soon to change. He and other Otpor founders were trained in the methods of US regime-change specialist Gene Sharp founder of the Albert Einstein Institute in Cambridge Massachusetts and by US State Department soft coup specialists such as Belgrade Ambassador Richard Miles and other trained US intelligence operatives, including election specialists and public relations image makers.

Guiding Otpor!’s Milošević ouster operation, US Ambassador to Serbia Richard Miles was a specialist in regime change, far more so than in classical diplomacy. He orchestrated the CIA coup in Azerbaijan that brought Aliyev to power in 1993 before arriving in Belgrade, and after that went on to orchestrate the CIA coup in Georgia that brought US asset Mikheil Saakashvili to power.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID), widely known as a CIA front, had channeled the Serb Otpor! Millions of dollars in funds through commercial contractors and through the US-government-financed NGOs: the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the National Democratic Institute, and the International Republican Institute. The Open Society Institute of George Soros was also funneling money into Popović ’s Otpor! for the toppling of Milosevic. I have yet to find a CIA and US State Department regime change or Color Revolution in which the “democracy-building” foundations of Soros were not in a kind of harmony with the Washington State Department and CIA agenda. Maybe just a coincidence.

The NED with all its affiliates was a project of Ronald Reagan CIA head, Bill Casey, in the early 1980’s to conceal CIA regime change operations around the world behind the front of a “private” democracy NGO, the NED. Allen Weinstein, cofounder of the NED admitted to the Washington Post, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” [snip]

“In short, Popović began his revolution-making career as a regime change specialist in an operation funded by the CIA, US State Department, US Government NGOs including the infamous NED and George Soros’ Open Society Institute. The question is what did Srđa Popović do after his first helpful service to Washington in 2000?” [snip]

Popović’s CANVAS claims to have trained “pro-democracy activists” from more than 50 countries, including Ukraine, Georgia, Zimbabwe, Burma (actually the legal name since independence from the British is Myanmar but Washington insists on the colonial name), Ukraine, Georgia, Eritrea, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Tunisia, Egypt and Syria. Popović ’s CANVAS was involved as well in unsuccessful attempts to start Color Revolution regime change against Venezuela’s Hugo Chaves and the opposition in the failed 2009 Iran Green Revolution.

Every one of those countries happen to also be targets for Washington regime-change of governments who refuse to toe the Washington line on key foreign policy issues, or which contain vital raw materials such as oil, natural gas or strategic minerals.

Goldman Sachs and Stratfor

Even more interesting details recently came to light on the intimate links between the US “intelligence consultancy”, Stratfor—known as the ”Shadow CIA” for its corporate clients which include Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and U.S. government agencies including the Department of Homeland Security and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

It was revealed in a huge release of internal memos from Stratfor in 2012, some five million emails provided them by the hacker community Anonymous, that Popović, after creating CANVAS also cultivated very close relations with Stratfor. According to the Stratfor internal emails, Popović worked for Stratfor to spy on opposition groups. So intimate was the relationship between Popović and Stratfor that he got his wife a job with the company and invited several Stratfor people to his Belgrade wedding.

Revealed in the same Stratfor emails by Wikileaks was the intriguing information that one of the “golden geese” funders of the mysterious CANVAS was a Wall Street bank named Goldman Sachs. Satter Muneer, a Goldman Sachs partner, is cited by Stratfor’s then-Eurasia Analyst Marko Papic. Papic, asked by a Stratfor colleague whether Muneer was the “golden goose” money behind CANVAS, writes back, “They have several golden gooses I believe. He is for sure one of them.”

(cross-posted from Café Babylon)

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TheOtherMaven's picture

This is precisely the sort of thing that the Sekret Alphabet Agencies plant, or at least encourage, in order to quash any opposition to Things As They Are.

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

wendy davis's picture

@TheOtherMaven

Otpor/CANVAS? if so, i'd have to say that that organization took pains to try and putsch not only resource-rich nations' leaders, but also socialist/communist ones.

but then i may have missed your meaning.

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TheOtherMaven's picture

@wendy davis

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

wendy davis's picture

@TheOtherMaven

once again, but do you mean that wilbert is a cia provocateur in posing this hideous plan, and x-rebellion unwittingly put it in their most recent newsletter?

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Cassiodorus's picture

Life is better for him now, but not because of Orban. Rather, life is better for him because he is now in Europe rather than in the United States.

How did this get to be such a lousy country?

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

wendy davis's picture

@Cassiodorus

a rhetorical question? ; )

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The Liberal Moonbat's picture

I say IT'S ABOUT GODDAMNED TIME!

Yes, no doubt the execution was "messy" ("sloppy", even, and Baal knows I hate that) - but nothing that competent engineers and tacticians couldn't spruce up. This is the kind of thing I've wanted to see happening my whole life (and could never understand why it wasn't).

I had also been reflecting, off and on, for years now about just how ideal - almost farcically so - drones are for the MIC's long and distinguished tradition of blowback....

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

wendy davis's picture

@The Liberal Moonbat

two comments, i'd figured i'd get an ass-kickin' on bringing the first topic re: the sainted extinction rebellion's newsletter, at least according to your first paragraph. different strokes, i guess i'll have to say, although i haven't the time to play your video; sorry. maybe in the morning.

on edit: i assume you're advocating using cheaper 'off the shelf' drones to bomb more oil refineries?

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The Liberal Moonbat's picture

@wendy davis I wouldn't know as far as that goes; I never knew anything about a newsletter, and I haven't been glued to this Extinction Rebellion thing. I'm interested in facts, actions, policy, and vision, not groups (as a matter of fact, I've concluded the very concept of collective labeling/identity is inherently malignant; humans are like the inverse of coral in that the more glom together, the stupider, uglier, and more all-around maleficent they become).

RE on edit: Not specifically, no. One thing I had been thinking more about was the simple fact that if something can be remote-controlled...it can be hacked. Imagine doing the double-duty of depriving Morgoth of its precious Predators and sending them after targets that could actually be said to deserve it, amiright? Since you mention it, "cheap" is not one of my favorite words; it's nice if you can get it, but I like "precise" and "clean" much better, and one does not tend to associate those two with the first.

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

wendy davis's picture

@The Liberal Moonbat

'I say IT'S ABOUT GODDAMNED TIME! Yes, no doubt the execution was "messy" ("sloppy", even, and Baal knows I hate that) - but nothing that competent engineers and tacticians couldn't spruce up.'

what do you imagine as 'sprucing up' either the i) refinery, or ii) the carbon from the burning oil? we seem not to use language in similar fashions.

but yes, i've now changed it on edit to: the sainted extinction rebellion's newsletter. as to this: "...not groups (as a matter of fact, I've concluded the very concept of collective labeling/identity is inherently malignant", that may be so in many cases, but in this case ya need to know who to send the money to, lol.

‘Climate activists including Extinction Rebellion to receive £500,000 from US philanthropists’, the independent.co.uk

The programme offers three levels of funding. The first is a start-up package which gives funding for printed materials and other supplies necessary for activists to start a demonstration.

The next level is funding for activist groups looking to create a permanent organisation, and the last level of funding is for activist groups that need to provide people with salaries, housing stipends, office space and marketing material.

The programme aims to force leaders to declare a climate emergency and create suitable policy solutions. The CEF is pushing for the global phasing out of fossil fuel infrastructure and creation of non-fossil fuel energy sources and carbon capture and storage solutions.

the US military and national guards have already declared 'climate emergencies', but you can just imagine what that may mean for the future, although i admit i haven read the pdf texts of either. but i do know that 'climate emergency' has caused many, many Green Bidnesses, green bonds, the'#We Mean Bidness' hashtag, 240 already just on that, iirc, and most endorse the most expensive and dangerous false solutions such as carbon capture, REDD, deranged geoengineering projects, and even once again: nuclear power, which the epically exploited little greta thunberg has endorsed.

a few weeks ago aoc's former chief of staff chakrabarti reckoned about $17 trillion had been available for #Green Capitalist Bidnesses, and now the figure $100 trillion is circulating. i also love the dickens outta the over-used term: 'net zero carbon' and wonder if the creators like aoc, Green deal UK, can even assign any meaning whatsoever to it. as to this:

Since you mention it, "cheap" is not one of my favorite words; it's nice if you can get it, but I like "precise" and "clean" much better, and one does not tend to associate those two with the first.

...yes, wilbert had noted 'inexpensive' off-the-shelf drones, as in: 'we don't have to use prohibitively expensive houthi drones to take out more refineries'.

but at least x-rebellion decided to not shut down heathrow airport. fancy how many, and what sort of personal disasters that might have caused.

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The Liberal Moonbat's picture

@wendy davis Holy Moses, that may not be the story of my life right there, but it sure is a major subplot lol. When it comes to language, my estimation can be likened to a combination of Lao Tzu and George Carlin, with a healthy portion of Ludwig Wittgenstein thrown in (if people's repeatedly mentioning him to me after speaking to me a while is any indication). Being an autistic prodigy and savant and textbook specimen of "culture-of-one" (that the Church of Cultural Anthropology so fervently denies the existence of) will do that to you.

what do you imagine as 'sprucing up' either the i) refinery, or ii) the carbon from the burning oil?

Neither; not that they're not both fair game, but what I actually had in mind when I typed that was the tactics and planning behind the attack: Questions like 'how/where do we attack the structure of the refinery in order to maximize the kind of damage we want to do, and minimize the kind of damage we don't want to do', and 'what consequences of this attack can we foresee beyond the immediate, and how can we prevent/minimize/compensate for those that we don't really want?', and even 'if this operation inevitably results in lemons, how might we then make lemonade?'.

...that may be so in many cases, but in this case ya need to know who to send the money to, lol.

Yeah, sure. I'll do something I've seldom done before in my life (as opposed to most other people's reflexive crutching on it) and say that's "Somebody Else's Problem" this time, hehheh. The money I spent on political charity in 2015-2016 could have bought me a decent car. It's starting to happen less now, but I'd been getting donation solicitation E-mails for a long time that obviously thought I was rich, and I'm fuckin' NOT (not to mention all the random live phone calls I've been getting from various organizations who politely hang up the moment I say the magic words "I'm out of money"). Clearly, I'd developed an expensive habit for a while there, and for the first time in my life, I'm actually trying to cut back (Tulsi, Monarch butterflies, defending Roe V Wade on occasion, a couple of bones Bernie's way, a smattering of anti-MIC causes, and my regular bottom-tier dues to The Long Now still get my money).

...and most endorse the most expensive and dangerous false solutions such as carbon capture, REDD, deranged geoengineering projects, and even once again: nuclear power, which the epically exploited little greta thunberg has endorsed.

It's not that simple. This is a situation, sadly, where engineers and professionals know a LOT more than activists, and the majority of activists are in fact dangerously unsophisticated. I learned that the hard way during the Fukushima disaster, when I came across an article by an apparently well-heeled veteran-of-decades anti-nuclear activist claiming it was literally Doomsday...and then humiliated myself by sending it to EVERYONE on my E-mail list at the time, including people I wasn't on good terms with (because I thought it was THAT important, right?!?). Fortunately, I've lived my entire life on the periphery of the hard scientific community, and a lot of the people on my list happened to be scientists and engineers, or at least well-educated in it, so they told me what was what (including giving me a bit of what I deserved, in some cases), that Fukushima was bad, but the article I'd initially sent (I did find another one that my harshest respondent called "a vast improvement") was Crank File material.

Geoengineering is certainly "mad scientist" territory, but it's not and shouldn't be out of the question; the trick is how to ensure that the REAL mad scientists are in charge of those operations and not the wannabes (or worst of all, the bean-counters). There seems to be a terrible war on the very concept of genius right now for various reasons, all horribly misguided if not outright malign, and the world needs its geniuses now more than ever. Given that the window for an ounce of prevention via rational policy has mostly come and gone, the pound of cure offered by geoengineering could be second-to-none. My father (a physicist) does take a relatively conservative stance regarding geoengineering, but he has long been a fan of the "giant space parasol" plan (as a matter of fact, I think he said he thought it up himself before hearing that anyone else had as well), and the next supervolcano event may wind up being something to celebrate rather than dread (my whole family are Futurama fans, and I once asked my father how much reality there was to the dark joke in one episode that went "Boy, I'm sure glad that whole global warming thing never happened"/"Well actually it did, but then nuclear winter canceled it out" - it turns out, scientifically-speaking, that would kinda work).

As for nuclear power, it's tricky, and legitimately controversial. The way I see it, it's something that CAN be used by some, but NOT by others, none of this "equality for all" business: For example, if you're anywhere in the Ring of Fire (Japan, California, Alaska, Phillipines, Australia, etc.), NO NUKES FOR US, sorry! On the other hand, a place like France, whose idea of a "natural disaster" is a blight on their grapes, (as I once heard someone put it), and high standards of competence and safety are still a thing? They get to use nuclear power, sure.

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

wendy davis's picture

@The Liberal Moonbat

many mouthfuls for me to begin to untangle, but i'll say that in the main, i disagree with you, especially about geoengineering (what could go wrong?) and nuclear power, chernobyl and fukishima being exhibits a and b, exhibit c being hansford station at which the stored waste still can't be contained after how many years, decades, and is still leaking into the rivers and into the ocean. uranium mining...arrrrggh. people are still dying from it.

but different strokes for different folks, and so on... ; )

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The Liberal Moonbat's picture

@wendy davis My uncle happened to be a uranium-miner in the '70s, and the aggressive cancer that took his life in the '000s can't possibly have been unrelated.

I'm not trying to be a 'booster' for nuclear power; it's just that it is one of the honestly less simple issues. The simple fact is, it doesn't contribute to global warming. I should think the waste-disposal dilemma (which I understand is quite real) can ultimately be solved via spacefaring technology (gathering huge quantities at a time and launching it on a trajectory for the sun, ideally). Note that my contribution to the issue was to propose a geography-based restriction.

As for geoengineering, bear in mind that mine was the irreplaceable good fortune of growing up in halcyon-era Silicon Valley, so perhaps that's why I think mad scientist shenanigans are something we need more of rather than less. I've seen some of what the best and the brightest can do if they're actually allowed to call the shots rather than being trapped under the bootheels of the monied and the muscled; most people, I guess, haven't.

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

wendy davis's picture

has said that both USAID and NED are cia cut-outs. in my recent post, nancy pelosi had been meeting with VZ expats in florida, as well as juan guaido's BFF. i'd also feataured in the mix:

‘Venezuela: Dueling Delegations Sent to New York as TIAR Treaty Invoked’; Colombian President Ivan Duque raised tensions on the eve of the UN General Assembly when he compared Maduro to Slobodan Milosevic and Al Qaeda’, venezuelanalysis.com, Sept. 23, 2019

and right on cue, it turned out that duque was lying w/ his photographic evidence, and that michelle bachelet, head of the UN HRC never had allowed testimonials from the victims of the opposition party headed by guaido...

but later orinoco tribune had featured a report that the colombian military was massing tanks on VZ's western border as in preparing for a land invasion.

and right on cue:

not all lies, but in the main (diseases, for instance), and no explanation of the reasons the economy's been crippled: sanctions. neither does telesur english, but oh my, the global strikes going on!

the orinoco tribune doesn't have anything new on that.

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